Month: April 2018

This recent commission, an acrylic painting of John Lennon around 1968, was an interesting one and got me thinking. What is my favourite Beatle track? What is my all time favourite Beatle’s album? I even played a Beatle song or two while painting it!

Like most people born in the 60s, but not everybody I appreciate, the Beatles were either a focal point or backdrop to your musical tastes and development. Over time they have fallen out of favour and come back in again, but their influence was immense musically and culturally.

So I started to go over a few songs and albums and the usual suspects all reared their heads – ‘Love Me Do’, ‘She Loves You’,’Yesterday’, ‘All You Need is Love’ etc etc. Now this wasn’t easy with such a back catalogue, however, there was one song which I still think is one of their best. It wasn’t a single but an album track off ‘Rubber Soul’, the reflective and slightly plaintive ‘In My Life’. Lennon and McCartney at their best.

With the albums again everybody seems to cite ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Clubs Band’ as the seminal album and game changer. For me this was difficult so I cheated and have picked two albums ‘Rubber Soul’ and ‘Revolver’ from the 1965/1966 period. What I like about these albums is that the songs are taut, simple yet cleverly constructed songs and the beginnings of intelligent and insightful lyrics.

Whatever your opinion is of the Beatles give it a go, unless you absolutely detest them you will find something. What’s amazing to me is how sometimes a simple portrait painting of somebody, who when all said and done is not somebody you know or have met, but can evoke connections and memories taking you back to a place somewhere like your childhood. Long live the power of art!

Sometimes it’s fun just to create a painting that’s a bit of a laugh. I started to paint this one with poking fun in mind, particularly the pompous Tory crowd on this boat just about to go over the edge of a waterfall.

The painting loosely inspired by Bosch’s painting ‘Ship of Fools’ http://www.hieronymusbosch.net/ship-of-fools/ and gives a big nod to the works of James Gilray and John Heartfield. In their time all these artists were capable of sending up the establishment and the rich and powerful.

Whatever your political stance the art of wit, humour, sense of the ludicrous and general lampooning should never be lost, and for me this is what this painting has recreated.

This painting is on show at the Alfred East Art Gallery, Kettering until 26th May 2018 if you want a closer look.